Alright, we’re going to repeat a bit of the Scripture that we read last time, and we’ll be finishing what has become a two-part sermon on the people who were near the cross in those days. So, let’s read now Mark chapter 15, verses 39 through 47. It’s in your bulletin there, you can follow as I read for you. This is God’s holy word. And when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, truly, this man was the son of God.
There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.
And when the evening had come, since it was the day of preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should already have died, and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled the stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph, saw where he was laid. Thus far, God’s holy, inspired, and infallible word. Thanks be to God.
Dear Heavenly Father, we pray now that our minds and hearts would be focused and undistracted. We can learn those things that we should and be able also to share with others. In Jesus’ name, Amen. Now last time, there were three parties, I guess you could say, near the cross. that we looked at last time. There will be three more today, but we looked at the two thieves and how one thief in anger and bitterness cursed Jesus, refused to have anything to do with him, but the other thief was changed. We trust by the work of the Holy Spirit. And he said, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus said, today you will be with me in paradise.
Then there were the bystanders, those who were just there out of curiosity or those who were there to enjoy Jesus’ suffering. Not very nice folks all around. But they were there and they had to see that even though their hopes for something to happen were not really satisfied, maybe the Lord did speak to their hearts a bit. And finally, the centurion, and we just read about him a few moments ago, how he came to the conclusion that this was indeed the Son of God. But in any event, this was when Jesus passed away. So last time, The passage basically tells us that among all these people that we’ve mentioned, the Lord was at work.
They were there, not for the best of reasons necessarily, but they were there and God did speak to their hearts. And tell us something about if you just happen to go to church or just feel like this day I’m going to church, but maybe you don’t have any real commitment to the Lord, God can still speak to you. What you expected, May not necessarily be what happens, but generally when God works with you, it’s a wonderful thing to take place there. Well, all these things took place either around the year 30 or maybe as late as 33, but right in that age range. And Jesus has been on the cross since 9 o’clock in the morning, and now it’s approaching 3 p.m. The darkness that had covered the land is beginning to lift. As we read, Jesus breathed His last. And we can now recognize, as the darkness moves away, we can recognize several of Jesus’ women followers.
Then there was Joseph of Arimathea, of course, who asked for the body of Jesus, and after some examination did receive it. And then the one person that we haven’t really focused upon a lot is the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and so we’re going to look at that as well.
So those three then complement the three that we looked at last time. Today, the women of Galilee, and then the august member of the council, Joseph of Arimathea, and finally, the Son of God and the Son of Man, God and man together, one miraculous incarnation for our sake. So, we’ll look first at the women of Galilee. Verse 40 says, the women were looking on from a distance.
The last time I pointed out that it was kind of unusual that there was one of these bystanders who actually got close enough to the cross to hear what Jesus said and to make remarks about it. Not many people were able to get close. Not everybody wanted to be close to the cross, but these women were very interested. And for whatever reason, they weren’t able to get right down there. I’m not sure they wanted to see that much suffering, but they looked on from a distance.
Now we’re going to use Mary Magdalene as an example. The Bible tells us that Jesus had cast from her seven demons. She had been possessed by seven demons. And you say, that’s a lot. And it certainly is a lot. But remember the fellow over on the Gadarene side of the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus inquired of him and he said, we are a multitude, we’re many. So many more than seven, I assume in that case. But poor Mary, she had suffered greatly from demon possession and the Lord rescued her.
And I think that’s the key thing to see about these women here. If you could say, what is the common point for all of them? Some more, some less, but they all were rescued. These women are the rescued women. Sometimes when poor women today are on the streets and they don’t live lives that are very clean, they are rejected by a lot of society, we say we go out and try to rescue such. And well, maybe again, not all of these women were in terrible condition. I use Mary Magdalene as an example so that we can see that this is a company of the rescued, whether it was just a little bit or a lot. These women were rescued and they wanted to show their gratitude to Jesus by following him.
Now there was another Mary here. I don’t know if she was a widow or not. Her husband was not mentioned here, and maybe he had passed on. But she had two boys, James and Joseph, and we can say they were gifts from the Lord. Now your children are not always so delightful, but in this case, Evidently, it was worth mentioning that she was the mother of two young men, and they were of use to Jesus. They weren’t of the twelve disciples, but they were followers of Jesus themselves.
They were what we might call covenantal gifts from the Lord to this dear lady. In any event, she was with Mary Magdalene, Widow, perhaps, that needed comfort. And Mary Magdalene and this Mary may well have needed each other and helped each other in that way.
And the rest of the women, how many more were there? Well, one more is mentioned, Salome. We don’t know too much or anything, really, about this lady. But I think there were probably more than three. They’re a company of them. And again, how shall we characterize them? They’re all people that Jesus had rescued. Wouldn’t you like to be among those people?
Not that I want you to have any bad time in your life, but just to say, you know, the Lord rescued me. Maybe you could say, I can certainly say, and if it hadn’t been for the Lord, I would have gone in this direction and ended up in great difficulties, or that direction, or some other thing. But we’re all rescued, are we not? There’s an old hymn that we sing sometimes, rescue the perishing, care for the dying, snatch them in pity from sin and the grave.
Well, that was pretty much the case with these women, and they had made it a priority in their lives. In other words, this was the most important thing as far as they were concerned, and that was that they might serve Jesus. This was a big thing with them. Some of them said, well, you should be home taking care of this or that. Maybe that would have been nice, but they had offered themselves to the Lord, and the Lord had accepted their help. It says here that when they were in Galilee, that they were following Him around, and whatever He needed, they were able to supply Him. There’s some thought that some of them had wealth, and they were able to use their wealth to help Jesus.
But they were indeed a group of rescued women who wanted to help. Jesus and even if we don’t go quite as far in our own lives. I once again want to emphasize that we’re rescued too and We should say Lord out of gratitude for what you have done for me. I want to serve you I want to help you.
It’s a very important point now these women I think we could call disciples and No, they weren’t among the twelve, and maybe not even among the menfolk, who were a larger group, but they were just as much disciples in their own way, disciples of a different sort. We might say, now a disciple is a learner.
And I give you for an example, Mary and Martha, who were the sisters of Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead, but they seemed to know a lot of things that they had learned along the way, and they weren’t even in this particular group. But for example, when Jesus was talking about, your brother is going to be raised from the dead, I’ll raise him from the dead, I’m the resurrection and the life. Well, Martha said, yes, in the general resurrection, At the end of time, I know He’ll be raised.” And Jesus, of course, went on to say, no, I’m going to raise Him before that.
But my point is that these women were learners, even though they weren’t in a particular group or assigned a particular responsibility. They were disciples who learned, but who also gave themselves to sacrificial service by His leading. And so, just again, for our benefit, We’re here today, or maybe we’ve been here many times, and we’ve attended Bible classes and so forth. It’s always good for us to be learners, but also, remember, the Lord wants servants too. He wants people who do things, not just people who listen to lessons, or even who are personally satisfied with what they learn, and that’s good stuff, yes, but who are willing to actually serve Him, do something for Him. Let’s not be just hearers of the Word, but doers as well.
Well, these women stood heartbroken, near enough to the cross anyway, to see and hear the suffering of the Lord. And you say, well, how could we really identify with that? We can appreciate what these women were doing and what they were going through.
But you see, this is one of the great things about the Bible, God’s Word, is, and I’ve kind of mentioned this before, you can be there through the Scriptures. You can be right there. The Holy Spirit can bring you right to that point. And you can feel what they felt. And you can be concerned as they were concerned. And you can rededicate yourself even as I’m sure many of them did.
They were close, but we can be close because the Lord will enable us to draw close through the Scriptures. Now I’m reading from Luke 12, verse 37. Blessed are those servants whom the Master finds awake when He comes. Truly I say to you, He will dress Himself for service and have them recline at table, and He will come and serve them. A wonderful thought there.
If we serve the Lord, He doesn’t owe us anything, but He wants also to be a servant for our sake. And the first way that He served us, of course, is to die for us on the cross, to take our sins upon Himself so that we might not perish, that we might not have to go through that, but that we could have everlasting life. Just as we give ourselves to Him, He gives Himself to us also. Another thing the Scripture says, and the Lord is talking, He says, draw near to me and I will draw near to you.
Well, that’s the women of Galilee. And you say, well, there’s two or three of us here that are not women, but say, I’m not quite like that. No, but you’re in the same boat in the sense that you need to be near him and serve him. So take that into account. Well, that’s the first group here for us to think about today, the women of Galilee. Then the august, I tried to think of a good big word to stick in there, the august member of the council, the respected, the very important member of the Jewish council, the Sanhedrin.
His name was Joseph of Arimathea. And scripture tells us that he was kind of edgy, you know. He did love the Lord and he was a disciple, but he didn’t let a lot, at least up to this point, he didn’t let a lot of people know about it. He was sort of secretive about it. I think this did bring him out more and make him more, but he asked for the body of Jesus and that took some courage. Because most of those people in the crowd, most of those people looking on were making fun of Jesus and mocking and so forth. But he said, not me. I want to identify with him. I want the body of Jesus.
Now there was another another man of the council whose name was Nicodemus. And we all know that name Nicodemus probably better than we know Joseph of Arimathea. But you remember Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. He said that we know that you’re a teacher sent from God. No man could do the signs that you do unless he had come from God. And then Jesus talked to him about being born again, except you’d be born again, you can’t see the kingdom, you can’t enter the kingdom, you have to be changed, you have to be born again.
Well, I think Joseph of Arimathea, without having all that explanation, I think he went through the same experience, if you will, of Nicodemus. Anyway, he was, like Nicodemus, very inquisitive. He wanted to know things. And if you read that John 3 passage about Nicodemus asking questions, how can a man be born when he is old? Those kind of things. And Joseph was like that too. He wanted to know things, certainly. He had a deeply attached relationship with Jesus. And he was the kind of person that would say, Lord, tell me more.
Lord, tell me more. I hope you’re like that. Lord, tell me more. Give me more of Yourself. The Apostle Paul in Philippians 3.10 says that I may know Him. Lord, give me more. I have questions. I have concerns. I have troubles. But give me more, Lord. Give me more. And the Lord says, I’m glad to do that. I’m glad to just fill you up till you can’t stand it.
Just more than you ever thought you could know. So, this matter of knowing Jesus means that something joyful came into their lives. Maybe up to this point they struggled, they were kind of people who never quite could get a hold of things, but then when they came to know the Lord, joy came in. You know the old Sunday school song, I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart. Where? Down in my heart. down in my heart to stay.”
Well, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and we hope maybe there was some more, but they said, Lord, what joy you have brought into our lives. So Joseph of Arimathea, like Nicodemus, became a believer. And certainly, he was, as we said, deeply attached to the Lord, even though there were those in the Sanhedrin who were saying, Tusk, Tusk, you’re too much identified with him.
He said, I can’t be too much identified with him. I wonder if maybe that’s your attitude today. Well, you know, it’s okay to be a Christian, but you kind of go overboard a little bit, and you just have to say, you know, with Him, you can’t go overboard. With Him, you can’t have too much. With Him, you just can’t hold it in. It’s like the matter of the cup that fills to overflowing from Psalm 23, my cup runneth over.
That’s what it’s like to know the Lord, to have that sort of joy. Now one thing we can say about Joseph of Arimathea was that he was courageous. Now you say, well, he was very courageous when he kept it all a secret. Yes, but you know that the courage kind of works its way through the more you know him, the more you identify with him. And I think the cross especially, the kind of put up or shut up situation that he was in.
He said, well, I’m going to put up. I’m going to identify with him. I’ve been a little secretive about it before, but not anymore. I want people to know that I belong to him. So he went to the governor. You know, he didn’t just go to the neighbor down the street or the fellow standing next to him. He went to the governor and he said, please may I have the body of Jesus. Now, he wasn’t fully into the resurrection stuff yet. He would be, of course. But he says, I want the body of Jesus. Well, what are you going to do with it, Joseph?
Well, he says, I’ve got a tomb. Now, Mark doesn’t tell us some of the details, but from other Gospels we know that this was his tomb. And it was the kind of tomb that belonged to people of means. He had first gotten the land somehow, and then he had carved out this grotto, if you will, this place where they could take and put the body and seal it up.
And he said, I’m going to identify with him that much. Now he says, I don’t know what comes later on. I’m still learning, but I want that body, and I want him in my tomb. And I want everybody to know that to his very death, I was with him. I was part of his situation. So that his persistence before Pilate indicates that he had a faith.
Pilate says, I’m not sure he’s dead. Oh, he’s dead, Joseph said. Well, let me find out for sure. And he sends for the centurion. And the centurion, who himself was amazed by all this, He says, yes, he died. He breathed his last. And I was close enough to hear his breathing, the centurion said, and he stopped breathing. You know, one of the wonderful things is that he started breathing again. Now, somebody would say, well, he was just revived, you know. Somebody did CPR on him or something, and he revived.
But no, no, he was dead. You say, how do you know he was dead? Well, the people who were experts in death said he was dead, OK? And men who could be punished if they told the wrong thing They said, he’s dead. And just to make sure, they told pilot, we took a spear. We haven’t had a spear there. And we took a spear and we lanced him in his side and out came blood and water, indicating that his insides were all torn up by that spear thrust, not to mention the bleeding from the head and the hands and the feet. It’s all there to indicate this man died. He was really dead.
And so, again, you have to ask yourselves, well, then why didn’t they just give up? Because Jesus had told them something about resurrection, about new life. And He said, just keep looking to Me. So this generous man, Joseph of Arimathea, he said, lay Him in my tomb. I don’t know how long He’ll be there. Maybe He’ll be there much longer than anybody expects. But lay Him in the tomb, because He and I, we’re one, we’re together. I’ve given my life to Him.
And I read this to you again, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate, who stopped being secretive, who asked Pilate for the body. Well, we have had the women of Galilee. and we’ve had the august member of the council and previously the two thieves and the bystanders and the centurion who was there at the cross well Mary was with the women, to be sure, but I think she got a little closer. That may have been so, because John was within hearing distance, and Jesus said, Behold your mother, mother behold your son. In other words, she’s going to be your mother from now on. She’s going to take care of you, and you take care of her.
Okay, but the person that I’m really thinking about is the most central of all the people, and that is the Son of God. Surely this man is the Son of God, but we know He’s also the Son of Man. This miraculous incarnation business, where God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, came down and took flesh, and He was the Son of God, and He was the Son of Man, and then we can make it present. He is the Son of God, and He is the Son of Man. We have this incarnation seen here at the cross more powerfully, I think. that even in His birth, you know, the baby Jesus and the manger and all that, and any of the things that went on during His normal lifetime. But at the cross, you really see the incarnation because of what we call the substitutionary atonement.
That is to say, you have one man. He wasn’t just a spirit from some other place, but He was one of us. He was born. He lived a life in this world. He was a carpenter. He did all kinds of things. And He substituted Himself for all who believe in Him. You say, it’s amazing. How can there be more than one substituting for one other?
But God says, no, this man was without sin. And so all the sin of My people who believe in Him, all of that sin is put upon Him. However many there are, thousands upon thousands, millions upon millions, but they believe in Him and they trust Him and all their sin comes upon Him.
Now, let’s think about His breathing for a moment. He remains with us today, you see. And not just as that spiritual being, because He rose from the dead and His breathing was restored. So when the disciples, some of the women, came to the tomb, and He wasn’t there, where was He? Well, we’ll find out. But He was breathing. He didn’t stop breathing. It came back again. He stopped, yes, He was dead. He was absolutely dead. The centurion said, I know He didn’t breathe anymore. He breathed His last.
But now He’s breathing again. Breathing. And one of the interesting illustrations that Jesus uses of the Holy Spirit is to breathe on His disciples. He breathed on them, it says. Now, that’s another thing to study. But what I want you to see is He breathed. When it says He breathed on them, He really did breathe. It wasn’t just their imaginations. But He breathed on them. His breathing was restored because He was restored.
He was raised from the dead. You say, do they have air in heaven to breathe? Oxygen, nitrogen, all those things in heaven? I don’t know. But He breathed and He’s still breathing and I guess there’s something there to breathe. But it means He’s alive. He is alive. Another mystery. On the cross, the Father forsook Him. Now what does that mean? My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me? Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. Why have You forsaken Me?
Because all the sin of God’s people was put on Him. So we have no more sin to answer for if we believe in Him, if we trust in Him. When He says He forsook Me, He is forsaking me. It’s a sin coming down upon Him. And I don’t know exactly how you can describe that other than to say what I deserved. And believe me, there’s a lot. It fell on Him. It fell down upon Him. God forsook Him for the brief moment that it was that my sin was laid upon Him. And all of us believers can say the same thing.
Now many people who heard him say, Eloi, Eloi, they thought he was saying Elijah. I guess they weren’t close enough there. But yes, Elijah had already come. Now not the last Elijah, the previous one I should say, but the one that came after him that’s mentioned in the book of Malachi and is identified by Jesus Himself as being John the Baptist. And that’s the irony. They said, He’s calling for Elijah.
And if Jesus, of course, was of a mind to have given a longer speech, He could have said, No, I’m talking about John the Baptist. But for our sake, let us say that what John came to do was to say, The Savior is here. This is the only Savior. This is the Messiah, the One who can deliver you. Believe in Him. Trust in Him.
And you remember it was the same John the Baptist who when he first saw Jesus, he said, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. The Lamb of God. That’s who was on the cross there. The Lamb of God. Not Eloi. Not Elijah. But the Lamb of God. Well, the living, breathing Jesus became first a lifeless corpse.
Joseph said, give me the corpse, the corpus delicti, we say in the mystery stories. And for parts of three days, he was nothing but a corpse. He had a spirit, of course, he was alive in the spirit. But that corpse was handed to Joseph and he laid him in the tomb and rolled the rock across the door.
What went on behind the door? Well, I can only tell you that in the Spirit, Jesus and the believing thief were in paradise. And there’s another passage that says that Jesus even revealed himself to people who were in hell or in Sheol. That stuff went on behind the door that we can only get a hint at. But the good news is that when the stone was rolled away, Jesus wasn’t there anymore. And they said, where is he? And he said, he’s not here. He’s risen. He’s risen.
That’s what we’re going to look at next time, is being risen. But the Spirit lived on, you see. until the resurrection, and so shall the spirits of all believers.” What happens to us when we die? Well, we go to be with Jesus in the Spirit. But the day is coming when the bodies that are in the graves, all of them will be raised up. Those who’ve done evil to the resurrection of the unjust, those who believe to the resurrection of the just. Hope you’re going to be in that resurrection, the real resurrection. And you can breathe a sigh of relief. Isn’t that nice? You can breathe a sigh of relief that you don’t have to answer for your sins. You don’t have to perish.
You can have everlasting life with him who’s gone before you, the forerunner, the first to rise from the dead, the Lord Jesus himself. So be ready. That day is coming. And let us pray. Father in heaven, we thank you that our Savior lives and that He lives to make intercession for us. He lives to look after us and to hear our prayers and do all kinds of things. But we’re amazed that the day will come when He’s going to receive us that where He is, we can be also. And Lord, what a blessing. What a reason to give thanks. We do so now in Jesus’ name.